Saturday, June 30, 2007

China's lessons for the World Bank

As the World Bank clings to its free-market ideology, China is providing more practical help for developing countries.

Jeffrey Sachs

The China Daily recently ran a front-page story recounting how Paul Wolfowitz used threats and vulgarities to pressure senior World Bank staff. The newspaper noted that Wolfowitz sounded like a character out of the mafia television show The Sopranos. At the same time, while the Wolfowitz scandal unfolded, China was playing host to the Africa Development Bank (ADB), which held its board meeting in Shanghai. This is a vivid metaphor for today's world: while the World Bank is caught up in corruption and controversy, China skilfully raises its geopolitical profile in the developing world.

China's rising power is, of course, based heavily on its remarkable economic success. The ADB meeting took place in the Pudong district, Shanghai's most remarkable development site. From largely unused land a generation ago, Pudong has become a booming centre of skyscrapers, luxury hotels, parks, industry, and vast stretches of apartment buildings. Shanghai's overall economy is currently growing at around 13% per year, thus doubling in size every five or six years. Everywhere there are startups, innovations, and young entrepreneurs hungry for profits.

I had the chance to participate in high-level meetings between Chinese and African officials at the ADB meetings. The advice that the African leaders received from their Chinese counterparts was sound, and much more practical than what they typically get from the World Bank.

Chinese officials stressed the crucial role of public investments, especially in agriculture and infrastructure, to lay the basis for private-sector-led growth. In a hungry and poor rural economy, as China was in the 1970s and as most of Africa is today, a key starting point is to raise farm productivity. Peasant farmers need the benefits of fertiliser, irrigation, and high-yield seeds, all of which were a core part of China's economic takeoff.

Two other critical investments are also needed: roads and electricity, without which there cannot be a modern economy. Farmers might be able to increase their output, but it won't be able to reach the cities, and the cities won't be able to provide the countryside with inputs. The officials stressed how the government has taken pains to ensure that the power grid and transportation network reaches every village in China.

Of course, the African leaders were most appreciative of the next message: China is prepared to help Africa in substantial ways in agriculture, roads, power, health, and education. And the African leaders already know that this is not an empty boast. All over Africa, China is financing and constructing basic infrastructure. During the meeting, the Chinese leaders emphasised their readiness to support agricultural research as well. They described new high-yield rice varieties, which they are prepared to share with their African counterparts.

All of this illustrates what is wrong with the World Bank, even aside from Wolfowitz's failed leadership. Unlike the Chinese, the bank has too often forgotten the most basic lessons of development, preferring to lecture the poor and force them to privatise basic infrastructure, rather than to help the poor to invest in infrastructure and other crucial sectors.

The bank's failures began in the early 1980s, when, under the ideological sway of President Ronald Reagan and prime minister Margaret Thatcher, it tried to get Africa and other poor regions to cut back or close down government investments and services. For 25 years, the bank tried to get governments out of agriculture, leaving impoverished peasants to fend for themselves. The result has been a disaster in Africa, with farm productivity stagnant for decades. The bank also pushed for privatisation of national health systems, water utilities, and road and power networks, and grossly underfinanced these critical sectors.

This extreme free-market ideology, also called "structural adjustment", went against the practical lessons of development successes in China and the rest of Asia. Practical development strategy recognises that public investments - in agriculture, health, education, and infrastructure - are necessary complements to private investments. The World Bank has instead wrongly seen such vital public investments as an enemy of private-sector development.

Whenever the bank's extreme free-market ideology failed, it has blamed the poor for corruption, mismanagement, or lack of initiative. This was Wolfowitz's approach, too. Instead of focusing the bank's attention on helping the poorest countries to improve their infrastructure, he launched a crusade against corruption. Ironically, of course, his stance became untenable when his own misdeeds came to light. The bank can regain its relevance only if it becomes practical once again, by returning its focus to financing public investments in priority sectors, just as the Chinese leadership is prepared to do.

The good news is that African governments are getting the message on how to spur economic growth, and are also getting crucial help from China and other partners that are less wedded to extreme free-market ideology than the World Bank. Many African governments at the Shanghai meeting declared their intention to act boldly, by investing in infrastructure, agricultural modernisation, public health, and education.

The Wolfowitz debacle should be a wake-up call to the World Bank: it must no longer be controlled by ideology. If that happens, the bank can still do justice to the bold vision of a world of shared prosperity that prompted its creation after the second world war.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

China, Big Winner in Global IPO Market

Global IPO activity soared to US$227 billion with 1,559 IPOs in 2006 from US$167 billion in 2005, according to figures released today by Ernst & Young (data provided by Ernst & Young, Dealogic and Thomson Financial).

Chinese companies raised $56.6 billion — the world No. 1 in 2006. China was followed by US companies with total proceeds of $34.1 billion, and Russian companies with $18 billion was placed in the third place.

2006 saw the biggest IPO ever with the listing of ICBC in China, raising almost US$22 billion alone. In second and third place came the IPOs for Bank of China Ltd and Rosneft with each raising more than US$10 billion, beating last year's most significant IPO for China Construction Bank. Four out of the top 10, and six out of the top 20, deals were from emerging markets.

HKSE (Hong Kong) came out number one with 17% of the total capital raised worldwide. In second place with 15% was LSE.

In 2005, Chinese companies raised US$24.2 billion from stock market, second only to US's US$33.08 billion.

Monday, June 18, 2007

China Links Two 20-Mile Bridges

The final link in a 20-mile bridge, said to be the world's longest cable-stayed structure of its kind, was connected Monday over China's Yangtze River, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The 6.45 billion yuan ($846 million) Sutong Bridge, linking the cities of Nantong and Changshu near the garden city of Suzhou, has the longest span of any cable-stayed bridge, at 3,569.55 feet, the report said.

The span of a bridge is the distance between the structure's main towers. The previous longest span in a cable-stayed bridge was the Tatara Bridge in Japan, part of a series of bridges linking the main Japanese island of Honshu with Shikoku. Its longest span is 2,920 feet.

The Yangtze River Delta, where the bridge is located, is in the midst of a massive construction boom that is bringing modern transport links to the Shanghai region, one of China's fastest growing industrial hubs.

On June 26, authorities plan to inaugurate the 22.5-mile Hangzhou Bay bridge, a structure that will link Shanghai with the port city of Ningbo to the south.

Auto sales keep roaring In China

Automakers produced over three million automobiles in China from January to April, of which 2,934,000 units were sold, a year-on-year growth of 21.36 and 21.46 percent respectively, as shown in statistics from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Biggest Demoracy or Biggest Chaos

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

India escapes U.S. list of worst human traffickers

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- India, which advocacy groups say may have as many as 65 million forced laborers, was spared the worst ranking on the State Department's new list of nations where humans are bought and sold.

The annual Trafficking in Persons report, released Tuesday, says that as many as 800,000 people -- largely women and children -- are trafficked across borders each year. Many are forced into prostitution, sweatshops, domestic labor, farming and child armies.

U.S. officials told CNN the question of India's ranking caused a heated debate between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte.

Negroponte wanted India listed as a Tier 3 country, or worst offender. Rice overruled him out of concern about alienating the Indian government. India is on the Tier 2 watch list.

Rice agreed to undertake a special evaluation of India in six months, and then take action if India does not make improvements.

Mark Lagon, ambassador at large for the State Department's Trafficking in Persons office, said Tuesday that "many different variables" played into the decision.

The United States, however, is not immune to the problem. The State Department estimates 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked into the United States each year.

India was put on the watch list for the fourth year in a row "for its failure to show increasing efforts to tackle India's large and multidimensional problem," according to the report.

The report found while the Indian government was making significant efforts to combat trafficking, it "did not recognize the country's huge population of bonded laborers," which advocacy groups estimate to range from 20 million to 65 million.

The report also found efforts by Indian law enforcement agencies to punish traffickers "uneven and largely inadequate."

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Faked Deaths Show Ills Of India's Police

(AP) As far as nearly everyone knew, Gurnam Singh Bandala was gunned down in a shootout with police 13 years ago during the waning days of an uprising by Sikh separatists.

That is, until Bandala turned up alive, living as a preacher outside this northern Indian city.

"It's the perfect cover, being dead," says Bandala, the classic image of a towering Sikh with his white robe, deep blue turban and long gray beard.

Authorities now believe an innocent farmer was deliberately killed by police so that they could present his body as Bandala's and collect a $60,000 bounty.

"I thought I was so lucky," Bandala told The Associated Press in an interview. But "there was no luck. There was murder."

Bandala's re-emergence is one of nearly a dozen similar cases reviewed by the AP that have surfaced recently in India. The faked police shootouts have shaken an already troubled justice system in a country that touts itself as a rights-respecting democracy where the rule of law prevails.

Former police officials and human rights activists say the fake encounters are the brutal result of a system dominated by poorly educated, badly trained and corruptible cops, dirty politicians and stagnated courts where justice, if it ever comes, can be delayed for years.

"Because cases take years to be settled, because witnesses don't show up, because bribes are paid, criminals get away. So the police resort to shortcuts," says Sankar Sen, a former policeman who's now a fellow at the Institute for Social Sciences in New Delhi.

The exact number of fake encounters is impossible to determine. Police officials acknowledge only a handful over the past two decades and say they are isolated cases.

But the former and current officers say the problem is more widespread, and rights activists estimated the number must be in the hundreds, if not thousands.

They point to the tens of thousands of people who have disappeared, many after being detained by police during one of the myriad insurgencies here in the last three decades. An estimated 3,000 people were lost without explanation during the Sikh uprising in Punjab in the 1980s and early 1990s. About 10,000 are missing in Kashmir, where an Islamic rebellion festers today.

In Punjab, the fight for a separate Sikh state left about 25,000 people dead, including 1,700 police. Bandala is one of three former separatist militants who were said to have been killed in shootouts but who recently turned up alive.

"Somebody was killed in their place," says Ranjan Lakhanpal, a human rights lawyer. "We believe there are many more."

In Kashmir, a Himalayan region wracked by an Islamic rebellion since 1989, police this year began investigating five cases, all involving security forces who may have killed innocents and claimed they were rebels to earn rewards.

And in Gujarat, a western state riven by tensions between Hindus and Muslims, three policemen and three senior officials have been arrested for their alleged role in the 2005 slaying of a Muslim couple. Authorities earlier had said the husband was part of a plot by Islamic militants to kill the state's top elected official, a Hindu nationalist.

However, the Kashmir and Gujarat probes are exceptions and most allegations never are fully checked, says Ajai Sahni, former chief of India's Intelligence Bureau, part of the country's law-enforcement apparatus. "They're the result of dogged investigations by good policemen. That rarely happens."

One reason few cases are investigated is that most Indians aren't interested. Wealthier Indians in particular have long accepted extrajudicial killings disguised as shootouts as the most expedient way to get rid of criminals.

There's even a reverential term for officers with the highest tallies: "encounter specialists."

"There is pressure from politicians, there is pressure from the public," says Sen, the former policeman. "They wat criminals eliminated, they cheer it."

Sen spent 35 years with the police, eventually running the National Police Academy before leaving the force to head the government's National Human Rights Commission.

He says that when he was a top officer years ago in the eastern state of Orissa, a politician, whom he won't name, told him to kill a troublesome bandit.

Sen says he refused, "but other policemen were more cooperative." The bandit was slain.

Police kill not only career criminals, but also stage shootouts to get promotions or rewards. That was the case with Bandala.

Bandala already was in hiding for a decade when he read, in July 1994, about his own death in a local newspaper. He worried at first, "then I realized the police wouldn't be chasing me anymore," he said.

At the same time, a woman who lived a few villages over would start looking for her husband, Sukhpal Singh.

According to court documents filed by Singh's family, police came to their home in August and picked up the farmer, then 26, for questioning.

"He disappeared like a ghost," says his widow, Dalbir Kaur. "We've never seen him again."

When Kaur and her mother-in-law went looking for Singh, the police who took him said he'd been transferred to another station. So they went there only to be told he'd been sent back to the first.

It went on and on. Months stretched into years. Singh's mother died and his family sold their small farm to pay for lawyers who are seeking $12,500 in a wrongful death suit.

Authorities have never told them what happened to Singh. But a senior Punjab police officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains sensitive, said authorities believe Singh was killed in Bandala's place. His body was presented as that of Bandala's and then cremated in accordance with Sikh custom.

Asked what happened to the two officers who were first credited with the killing _ and claimed the reward _ he said one, Jaspal Singh, a former deputy superintendent of police, is in jail, convicted of torturing and murdering a human rights activist. The other, Paramraj Singh Umrananagal, is now a senior Punjab police officer. He refused to speak about the case.

Bandala, meanwhile, was caught by police in 1998 and spent four years in prison on charges of carrying illegal weapons. He was convicted under his real name, but the public record _ which lists Bandala as deceased _ was never changed.

Monday, June 04, 2007

China's AVS codec gains more top-tier support

SHANGHAI — More top-tier chipmakers are offering support for a Chinese codec that will be used in the domestic IPTV, satellite and possibly the cable TV market.

Both Broadcom Corp. and Conexant Systems Inc. are working on chips for China's Audio Video Coding Standard (AVS). They join STMicroelectronics, which already supports the codec in software, and is spinning a hardware optimized version that will be ready by the fourth quarter.

In that same time period, one of Broadcom's 65-nanometer based products will include custom hardware accelerators to support AVS, said Aidan O'Rourke, a Broadcom executive in charge of IPTV products.

Conexant plans to have its silicon ready for sampling by the first quarter of 2008, a spokeswoman said. Texas Instruments is also able to offer DSP-based support.

A handful of Chinese chip companies are also targeting AVS for set-top boxes. SVA Co and Beijing-based United Source Coding Co. have developed an encoder and Longjing Microelectronics Co., Grandview Semiconductor, and Celestial Semiconductor are working on decoders.

Incomplete List of Political Violences in India Since April 2006

This post only covers the deadly violences that caused causalties for political reasons in India between April 2006 and Agust 2007, such as police killings, rebellion killings, killings for political hatred and the killings for religionous reasons. This is a post that response to Indian's boasting about the superiority and the stability of their political system.

I don't think this list will cover all of those cases since I am only a blogger. Also the collection started in May 2007. A lot more incidents before then were missed in this post.

I decided to stop the collecting due to the limited time I can spend on it. But the post clearly show what is India's situation. It will answer your questions such as:Is India politically stable?Is India a real democratic country as India cliams?Is India shining?

Make your judgements by truth.

BTW, recently twin bomb blasts killed at least 43 and injured more than 100 people 08/26 at India's cyber-city of Hyderabad.

08/13/2007: Source. Four Hindi speakers have been killed by separatist militants in India's north-eastern Assam state, police say. The latest deaths bring to more than 30 the number of people killed in rebel attacks in Assam in the past six days.

08/13/2007: Source. Three persons including a teenage boy were killed and 16 others injured, some of them critically in a powerful grenade explosion carried out by suspected militants in North Kashmir this afternoon.

08/13/2007: Source. Army on Monday shot dead two militants of Karbi Longri National Liberation Front (KLNLF), responsible for slaughtering 29 Hindi-speaking settlers in Assam's Karbi Anglong district since August 8.

08/12/2007: Source. Suspected rebels killed four Hindi-speaking migrant workers before dawn Sunday and three more bodies were found from an earlier killing in India's insurgency-wracked northeast, police said, bringing the death toll from a week of violence to 30.

08/11/2007: Source. Indian police hunted down and killed a suspected Kashmiri militant believed to be the mastermind of a 2005 attack on a disputed holy shrine, police said on Saturday.

08/11/2007: Source. Thirteen people were killed and 15 wounded in attacks by rebels in India's Assam state days before the country celebrates its 60th independence anniversary.

08/11/2007: Source. A top militant of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JEM) was shot dead in an encounter with the police on the outskirts of Jammu Saturday.

08/08/2007: Source. Two people were killed and 12 injured in a series of bomb blasts in India's northeastern state of Assam on Wednesday.

08/02/2007: Source. Leftist guerrillas killed two people, including an elderly man, in separate incidents near Raipur.

07/27/2007: Source. Indian police kill at least 8 people in protesters clash. The protest a day earlier in Mudigonda, a small village in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, was called by two Indian communist parties as part of a campaign to press the government to give land to the poor.

07/14/2007: Source. A local official kidnapped by rebels in the northeastern Indian state of Assam was found dead Monday.

07/11/2007: Source. Abducted Food Corporation of India (FCI) official P.C. Ram was killed in a gunbattle between security forces and members of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) at Borka Panitema village in Kamrup district of Assam from late Wednesday night to Thursday noon. Two ULFA men were also killed in the encounter with security forces .

07/10/2007: Source. Five Maoists were Tuesday gunned down by police in a gun battle in the forest region of the Western Ghats in Karnataka.

07/09/2007: Source. Maoist militants attacked Chintagufa village in the state's insurgency-hit Bijapur district Friday night and took two farmers to a nearby forest.The bullet-ridden bodies of the farmers, Kalmu Dulla, 50, and Marwi Mura, 40, were found in the forest Monday.

07/09/2007: Source. An hours-long battle between police and Maoist rebels armed with machine guns and mortars ended with the deaths of 25 rebels and 24 police in a thick forest of Chhattisgarh State in central India.

07/06/2007: Source. Police opened fire on a crowd protesting alleged human rights abuses in Jammu and Kashmir yesterday, killing one teenager and wounding a second person.

07/05/2007: Source. A civilian was killed and another wounded in Kashmir on Thursday when an Indian soldier fired at angry villagers who tried to seize him while he was reportedly cuddling with a Muslim girl.

07/05/2007: Source. Two villagers were killed when hundreds of Nagaland residents crossed the border and torched four settlements in Geleki, in Sibsagar district. More than 20 villagers have been injured in the attack.

07/01/2007: Source. Two villagers were beaten to death and another seriously injured on orders issued by a kangaroo court held by Maoist rebels in India's eastern state of Bihar, a news agency reported Monday.

06/30/2007: Source. Naxalites of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) attacked and blew up two police posts and killed nine persons, including seven policemen, in Rohtas district of Bihar on Saturday night.

06/30/2007: Source. Four powerful bombs set off by suspected separatists exploded in crowded markets and outside a Hindu temple in northeast India's Assam state on Saturday, killing five people and wounding more than 70.

06/28/2007: Source. At least seven suspected Muslim militants were killed on Thursday by security forces in India- administered Kashmir as they sought to cross into India while a soldier died in the encounter, officials and reports said. Three militants said to be planning a suicide attack were killed by the police in another gun-battle in the insurgency-torn state.

06/25/2007: Source. In Chhattisgarh, tension prevailed in the southern parts as Maoists allegedly killed two members of a civil militia movement soon after the blockade began at midnight on Monday.

06/25/2007: Source. At least two persons were killed and 11 injured Monday when a grenade lobbed at security forces missed the target and exploded at a bus stand in Jammu and Kashmir's Doda town, about 175 km from here.

06/24/2007: Source. Five unidentified militants were killed and three army personnel injured in the gunbattle at village Beri-Doori near the Line of Control (LoC) in Keran sector on Sunday.

06/23/2007: Source. A bomb blast in the city of Gauhati in northeast India Saturday has killed at least five people and wounded nearly three dozen more.

06/22/2007: Source. Two Maoists were killed Friday in a gun battle with police in Andhra Pradesh's Warangal district.

06/19/2007: Source. Two security personnel were killed and two injured when 20 Maoists attacked a police team on a train in Bihar in Central India.

06/18/2007: Source. A 15 year old boy was killed in a cross fire when an encounter was going on between Indian Troops and LeT militantsin Chewdara area of Beerwah of District Budgam.

06/17/2007: Source. A top rebel leader and two other suspected militants were killed on Monday in a gunbattle with Indian forces in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

06/13/2007: Source. Police killed a rebel and recovered 10 kg (20 lb) of explosives in Guwahati, A main city of Assam.

06/13/2007: Source. Two people were killed and 30 wounded in a powerful bomb blast in a crowded village market in India's restive state of Assam on Wednesday

06/12/2007: Source. Three Indian soldiers and Five suspected Islamic militants were killed in Kashmir.

06/11/2007: Source. In occupied Kashmir, an Indian police personnel and a civilian were killed and a woman was injured in an attack at Mola in Ramban district.

06/10/2007: Source. Indian troops in Kashmir have shot dead three Islamic militants along the de facto border with Pakistan and a further three people have been killed by rebels.

06/10/2007: Source. At least eleven people were killed and six injured in clashes between two rival ethnic separatist groups, Meitei and Kuki , in India's northeastern state of Manipur.

06/05/2007: Source. In Maoist attack, two policemen were killed in the eastern state of Bihar after stepping on a landmine while scouring the forest for rebels.

06/05/2007: Source. Landmine blasts, blamed on Maoist rebels, killed at least five people In the central state of Chhattisgarh on Tuesday, soon after the insurgents bombed electricity transmission towers plunging thousands of homes into darkness. At least three workers of the state electricity board were killed when the truck in which they were travelling hit a landmine.Five policemen were also injured in Tuesday's blast in Narayanpur district in the south of the state, police said.Last week, landmines planted by Maoist rebels in Chhattisgarh killed at least nine police officers.

06/04/2007: Source. At least four suspected Muslim militants were killed Monday by security forces in India.

06/04/2007: Source. Suspected separatist rebels shot dead two ruling party leaders and abducted another politician in India's north-eastern state of Assam, it was reported Tuesday. A police spokesman told the IANS news agency that militants of the banned Dima Halam Daoga (DHD) killed Purnendu Langthasa, head of an autonomous local administrative council and his colleague, Nindu Langthasa in the North Cachar Hills district after a rally for council elections on Monday.

06/03/2007: Source. Suspected rebels ambushed a police vehicle in India's troubled northeast, killing four policemen and injuring two others near Koilapahar, a village 220 miles south of Gauhati, the Assam state capital.

06/02/2007: Source. At least four Maoist militants were shot dead in armed clashes with police in India’s central Chhattisgarh state.In 2006, 749 people including rebels, security personnel and civilians were killed in Maoist-related violence, while there were over 250 dead in the first four months of 2007.

05/30/2007: Source. At least nine people including a paramilitary soldier have been killed in separate insurgency-related violence in India's northeastern state of Manipur.

05/30/2007: Source. A Bhutanese refugee was killed and 11 injured after Indian police fired on them as they tried to cross the Nepal-India border to return to their homeland.

05/28/2007: Source. Angry villagers blocked highways and railroad lines in northwestern India for a third day Thursday as the death toll from clashes with police rose to 18 after an officer was beaten to death and police shot four protesters.

05/26/2007: Source. A bombing in Guwahati which left seven dead and 30 injured—apparently the work of the separatist United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA).

05/25/2007: Source. Land mines planted by Maoist rebels killed at least nine police officers in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh.

05/25/2007: Source. Maoist rebels have killed four members of its breakaway group in Lathear district of Jharkhand.Maoists raided a village and abducted four members of Tritiya Prastuti Committee (TPC) on Monday night. They were later killed in the jungles of Lather district

05/24/2007: Source. Maoists late Sunday attacked the house of a Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader in West Midnapore district of West Bengal, killing his father-in-law, police said Monday.

05/19/2007: Source. Five Islamic militants and an Indian soldier were killed in gunbattles in Kashmir.Indian forces are seeking to suppress an Islamic separatist revolt that began in 1989 and has claimed at least 42,000 lives by official count.Kashmiris frequently voice resentment at the presence of an estimated 500,000 Indian security forces in the region who are battling the militants.

05/18/2007: Source. At least 13 people were killed on Friday when a bomb ripped through a historic mosque in southern India, sparking clashes between angry Muslim worshippers and security forces.At least two of the 13 deaths were caused by police who fired live ammunition and tear gas at angry crowds protesting against what they said was a lack of police protection,

05/15/2007: Source. Separatist rebels killed six immigrant labourers in coordinated strikes on Tuesday in northeast India's restive Assam state.These attacks came a day after five people were killed on Sunday (05/13/2007)in ethnic clashes in eastern Assam.Two people were killed on Monday (05/14/2007)in a bomb blast set off by the rebels at a market in Guwahati, the state's main city.More than 20 000 people have been killed since the insurgency began in Assam in 1979.

05/13/2007: Source. Five Maoist guerrillas were killed in a shootout after security forces in eastern India raided a rebel hideout.Meanwhile, in Chhattisgarh Maoist rebels killed a police constable deployed to guard state Public Health Engineering Minister Kedar Kashyap in insurgency hit Bastar district.

03/14/2007: Source. Farmers in eastern India angered by government plans to build an industrial park on their land fought police with rocks, machetes and pickaxes, and at least 12 people were killed, 39 people were wounded, including 14 police officers. The incident brought the death toll in Nandigram since violence first erupted there to 19 since January 7.

02/19/2007: Source. Two coaches of the Samjhauta Express traveling between India and Pakistan caught fire after twin blasts rocked the railway carriages at around 11:53 P.M. IST (18:23 UTC) on Sunday, February 18, 2007, as the train was passing through the railway station in the village of Diwana near the Indian city of Panipat, Haryana, India. The incident caused death of 68.

01/08/2007: Source. violence erupted in Assam with militants killing four more people, taking the toll in a string of deadly attacks mainly targeting Hindi-speaking migrant workers rising to 66.

01/06/2007: Source. At least 21 lives, including 13 migrant workers shot while they slept and eight government employees killed by a land mine explosion by suspected separatist rebels in Assam state.

01/05/2007: Source. A series of attacks by suspected separatist rebels killed 35 migrants and wounded at least 19 in Assam state's tea-growing districts of Tinsukia and Dibrugarh.The Naxalites retaliated with Light Mortar Guns and rifles from the top of the hills killing on the spot two policemen.

12/25/2006: Source. At least four Naxalites were reportedly killed in a major offensive planned by police on a naxal-den in remote Gyarabatti area of north Gadchiroli.

11/26/2007: Source. a suspected terrorist bomb explodes on a train in West Bengal State, India. 5 people were killed and more than 25 were injured.

09/08/2006: Source. At least 2 bomb blasts target a Muslim cemetery in the western town of Malegaon. The blasts kill 37 people and leave 125 others wounded. The explosions have come four days before the verdicts are due to be announced for 123 defendants in a trial linked to the 1993 bomb attacks in Bombay that killed 257.

09/04/2006: Source. Indian police shot dead one of the longest surviving militants in Kashmir in an overnight raid on his hideout. Billu Gujjar, 36, a local commander of the rebel group Hizbul Mujahideen was killed on Monday in Udhampur. On the same day, insurgents killed a soldier who resisted attempts to be forced from his home in Khaipora village. The soldier's brother was also killed. On 09/05/2007: Source.Suspected militants shot dead 22-year-old Junaidul Haque, a resident of Sopore. Elsewhere, in Pulwama and Anantnag, troops shot dead three militants late Monday and Tuesday, said police.

08/16/2006: Source. At least five persons were killed and 50 others, incluing five American and three French nationals, injured when a powerful bomb exploded in the complex of International Society for Krishna Consciousness .

07/11/2006: Source. Mumbai train bombings were a series of seven bomb blasts that took place over a period of 11 minutes on the Suburban Railway in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay), capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and India's financial capital. 209 people lost their lives and over 700 were injured in the attacks. According to the Indian police the bombings were carried out by Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Students Islamic Movement of India.

06/02/2006: Source. Twelve tribal villagers in India were shot dead by police on January 2 during a demonstration against the development of the Kalinga Nagar steel complex in the eastern state of Orissa. A 13-year-old boy and three women were among those killed.

05/31/2006: Source. A land mine believed planted by communist rebels killed 12 officers from a paramilitary police force when officers from the Central Reserve Police Force were heading back to their base in the state of Jharkhand. Maoist rebels were believed to be responsible for explosion.

05/01/2006: Source. Suspected Islamic militants have killed at least 35 Hindus in two separate attacks in Indian-controlled Kashmir. More than 60,000 people have been killed since an armed separatist insurgency began in Kashmir in 1989.

05/01/2006: Source. At least four people were killed and 22 injured Monday in the western Indian city of Vadodara in demonstrations over the demolition of a mausoleum.In February-March 2003, Gujarat state saw the deaths of 1044 people - mostly Muslims - in sectarian violence, according to official government figures. Unofficial estimates put the death toll at more than 3,000.

04/13/2006: Source. Five people, one a policeman, have been killed in violence in the southern Indian city of Bangalore following the death of legendary film actor Rajkumar.

Sunday, June 03, 2007

4 policemen killed in northeast India

Dressed in olive green jungle fatigues, the insurgents attacked the police vehicle on Sunday near Koilapahar, a village 220 miles south of Gauhati, the Assam state capital, said Anurag Tankha, a superintendent of police.

"The injured police officers walked to a nearby police station and informed of the attack by up to 10 tribal militants," Tankha told The Associated Press.

Police suspect the attack to be a joint operation by local tribespeople and the United Liberation Front of Asom.

While the ULFA has been fighting for an independent Assam homeland since 1979, the Karbi Longri North Cachar Hills Liberation Front demands wide autonomy within India for the region inhabited by Karbi and Dimasa tribespeople.

The tribal group had launched a major attack in the area in January and killed five policemen and two civilians.

Monday's attack came as top army, paramilitary and police officers from four insurgency-hit states in India's northeast — Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh — met in Gauhati and discussed steps to jointly fight militancy in the region.

The rebels say Assam's indigenous people, most of whom are ethnically closer to Myanmar and China than to the rest of India, are ignored by the federal government in New Delhi, some 1,000 miles to the west. They also accuse the government of exploiting the northeast's rich natural resources.

Friday, June 01, 2007

Ridiculous "peace index" created by westerners

In my opinion, to judge if a country if peaceful or not, some straightforward index are very valid, at least much better than these trash "experts" suggested.1. How many countries this country has had wars with?2. How many countries this country has military presences without authorization from UN?3. How many civilians this country's military has killed in recent 20 years?

Some information about the so-called peace index can be founf in wiki.